Toes In The Sand Quotes

She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That's life. It hurts, it's dirty, and it feels very, very good.

She had sand in her mouth and between her toes, the briny wind raising goose bumps on her skin, and the sweetest, spellbound feeling spilling from her heart. She could, at that moment, have died for him.

The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It's incomprehensible because there's nothing to compare it to. It's like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who's lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.

A long walk. A very long walk. Sand between my toes. The rough surf at times reaching and washing away my footprints. About a mile down the beach, I sat down and started thinking back through everything Vance had told me so far. Thought about what my next moves would be. Seeing the Asian guy tomorrow and having him snoop would settle one thing in my mind. Did Vance do it or not? Crucial. Until I knew that, I didn’t want to go any further.

Let my toes teach the shore how to feel a tranquil life through the wetness of sands Let my heart latch the door of blackness, as all my pain now blue sky understands

As a single mother, I feel like I carry the weight of the ocean on my shoulders trying to keep my head above water to keep from drowning. I try to stand firm as I dig my toes in the sand, but the troubling waves tend to wash the sand away from under my feet. I lose my balance, but I have to make the best of what I am given; take a leap of faith and start swimming.

To say that I enjoyed writing... is like saying I enjoy having fingers and toes. It's difficult to imagine life without them.

I've got my toes in the water, ass in the sand. Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand. Life is good today. Life is good today. -from "Toes

context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life. I mean, lets face it:when you're eating simple barbecue under a palm tree, and you feel sand between your toes, samba music is playing softly in the backgroud, waves are lapping at the shore a few yards off, a gentle breeze is cooling the sweat on the back of your neck at the hairline, and looking across the table, past the column of empty Red Stripes at the dreamy expression on your companion's face, you realize that in half an hour you're proably going to be having sex on clean white hotel sheets, that grilled chicken leg suddenly tastes a hell of a lot better

It is the simplest things in life that hold the most wonder; the color of the sea, the sand between your toes, the laughter of a child.

Can you speak Espanol?" "Si." "I think you're lying." "What difference does it make? All I want is warm sunshine and sand between my toes.

She was supposed to build sand castles on the beach and put her toes in the ocean,” Madame says.

Tom found himself writing "BECKY" in the sand with his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it.

For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not?

A girl who travels has learned how to dance barefoot. She’s learned to place her toes in the sand and dance through rhythm, not through rehearsed footwork. She’s learned to follow what she likes, not what she needs to like.

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't grow on trees, like in the old days. So where does one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy, like being unleashed with a credit card in a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss. The sloppy kiss. The peck. The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss. The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss. The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad sometimes kiss. The I know your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get older, kisses become scarce. You'll be driving home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road, with its purple thumb out. If you were younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's red door just to see how it fits. Oh where does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile. Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling. Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss. Now what? Don't invite the kiss over and answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspicious and stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whiskey. It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters, but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of your body without saying good-bye, and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left on the inside of your mouth. You must nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a special beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow, then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C. But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss. The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

Because he is good and kind,” she explained softly, then went on. “Because he treats me like a princess. Because he makes me laugh. Because he makes me happy. Because he took the trouble to read to me when I could not read to myself. Because he fed me and gave me wine when I could not eat or drink at balls. Because when he kisses me my toes curl, and when he makes love to me I cannot contain my passion.

Color streamed into a toe of darkness testing the sand.

I liked laughing, I found out, and music. I liked nice people, getting up early, and working hard. I liked simple pleasures, like my toes in the sand and someone to kiss.

My mother is soil and rain, clay, ash, sand, sun and moonlight. My mother is a weeping willow— strong, daring, dripping. My mother is oceans so salty and wild she can consume whole cities— but, mostly, she chooses to be calm turquoise, washing softly over toes in sand. She is vast— some places un-navigated. She is offering, felt without words, sacred, and restful. She grows life. —mother/Mother Earth

You're nervous around me. I don't bite." He turned his head and swept a gaze over her that went from head to toe and back again. "Unless you like that sort of thing.

When you've walked on daggers your entire life, you don't even know how to trust the softness of sand between your toes. -but you need to try anyway.

When my toes are sunk into warm sand and the ocean is lapping my feet, when I breathe in the scent of salt and hear the cry of a seagull, I know that I am returned to a place of restoration. I am home.I can heal here.

Sand from the Urns Green as mould is the house of oblivion. Before each of the blowing gates your beheaded minstrel turns blue. For you he beats his drum made of moss and of harsh pubic hair; With a festering toe in the sand he traces your eyebrow. Longer he draws it than ever it was, and the red of your lip. You fill up the urns here and nourish your heart.

Poor Father, I see his final exploration. He arrives at the new place, his hair risen in astonishment, his mouth and eyes dumb. His toe scuffs a soft storm of sand, he kneels and his arms spread in pantomimic celebration, the immigrant, as in every moment of his life, arriving eternally on the shore of his Self.

Until that moment she had not really noticed him. Now she felt as though she'd stubbed her toe on a rock, and looked down to find that it was part of a buried city.

But this dagger – this was her first. Her favorite. The same one that had sliced off the boy’s toe on the beach and sent it rolling through the sand.

I would have liked to stick my toes in the sand, or ride a tall horse. Today, I will go buy fifty pounds of cat food, and like it.

We were getting closer and closer to that invisible line in the sand. The line that, when crossed, meant I’d no longer be Jamie Maysen’s wife. I’d be some other man’s girlfriend. A part of me wanted to run away from that line. Another wanted to take a flying leap to the other side. As it was, I was just standing with my toes on its edge. Frozen. Because I knew the man who’d pull me across was Cole. … He was the man of the future, patiently waiting on the other side of the line. I could imagine him standing there, holding out his hand. I wanted to take Cole’s hand.

Mathematicians still don’t understand the ball our hands made, or how your electrocuted grandparents made it possible for you to light my cigarettes with your eyes. It isn’t as simple as me climbing into the window to leave six ounces of orange juice and a doughnut by the bed, or me becoming the sand you dug your toes in, on the beach, when you wished to hide them from the sun and the fixed eyes of strangers, and your breath broke in waves over my earlobe, splashing through my head, spilling out over the opposite lobe, and my first poems under your door in the unshaven light of dawn: Your eyes remind me of a brick wall about to be hammered by a drunk driver. I’m that driver. All night I’ve swallowed you in the bar. Once I kissed the scar, stretching its sealed eyelid along your inner arm, dried raining strands of hair, full of pheromones, discovered all your idiosyncratic passageways, so I’d know where to run when the cops came. Your body is the country I’ll never return to. The man in charge of what crosses my mind will lose fingernails, for not turning you away at the border. But at this moment when sweat tingles from me, and blame is as meaningless as shooting up a cow with milk, I realise my kisses filled the halls of your body with smoke, and the lies came like a season. Most drunks don’t die in accidents they orchestrate, and I swallowed a hand grenade that never stops exploding.

I saw the camel put on its shirt An leave without tears for Mecca With a thousand and one Sand sellers and Dark crowds like scaly dragons But i could not follow them For sloth won out Against my ardour And daily habit resumed Its disjointed toe-dance

Watch out for love (unless it is true, and every part of you says yes including the toes) , it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream won't be heard and none of your running will end. Love? Be it man. Be it woman. It must be a wave you want to glide in on, give your body to it, give your laugh to it, give, when the gravelly sand takes you, your tears to the land. To love another is something like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Vacations in my family are rare events squeezed between races. I can count them on one hand, and even those amount to only a few hours each. Shopping in Los Angeles. Sinking my toes into snow white sand in Florida. They are tiny slips of memory strung around horses.

That last thought was what made Nasir nudge Altair’s bare bicep with the toe of his boot. Altair’s right eye popped open instantly and Nasir clenched his jaw—he should have known. “For a moment, I thought you might do it,” Altair said. “Do what?” the girl asked. She yawned as she brushed her teeth with a siwak. Altair’s mouth curled into a grin. “Kiss me.” Nasir kicked him, and Altair’s laughter only increased.

buttons, and turns out his toes.' [later editions continued as follows When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark, But, when the tide rises and sharks are around, His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.] 'That's different from what

I let every grain of sand slip through my fingers As the wind carried them away; Some drops of rain absorbed by the sand, Some dissolved in the sea. I'd go back carrying no traces Of where I'd been, But the sand settled between my fingers, And the grains falling off from my toes. I wouldn't soil the carpet on the floor If only I'd known...

Toe fungus?

She could handle a stray finger or even a toe, but eyeballs popped when they were stuck under one’s foot, and that seemed to be the line Evie’s mind had drawn in the sand.

I walked to the lip of the water and let the foamy tongue of the rushing liquid lick my toes. A sand crab burrowed a hole a few inches from my foot and then disappeared into the damp sand.…

I want Will. With his long nose and soft eyes. With his strong shoulders and hair wet from the ocean water. With his large hands and warm smile. With his shirt off and sand between his toes. But not only that. I want him with winter boots on and a hat on his head. I want to see him at Halloween and at Christmas and at Easter too. I don’t want my Will of summer. I want my Will of forever.

already she drew in the sand with her big toe: King Solomon, as though he were a rubber ball, an apocalyptic, bearded herring, an imperial walking-stick, an amalgam, half chicken and half Solomon.

She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That’s life. It hurts, it’s dirty, and it feels very, very good.

Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow imagined his younger self standing down the timeline of his present life, bare toes curling in teenage beach sand, looking ahead to today and watching his future life collapse in on itself like a dying star. His future life becoming small and dark and dense, its gravity apparently grim and inescapable. Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow spent some cash on a bottle of vodka and drank it at home within an hour.

Soft hissing waves run over my toes. The floor is a beach and I am rolling on the sand and splashing in the water with a white heron. It turns gray and blue. No one can stop this. No one will take away my radiance even when it floods over me completely.

But taking my meal outside by the burning juniper in the fireplace with more desert and mountain than I could explore in a lifetime open to view, I was invited to contemplate a far larger world, one which extends into a past and into a future without any limits known to human kind. By taking off my shoes and digging my toes into the sand I made contact with that larger world - an exhilarating feeling which leads to equanimity. Certainly I was still by myself, so to speak - there were no other people around and there still are none - but in the midst of such a grand tableau it was impossible to give full and serious consideration to Albuquerque. All that is human melted with the sky and faded out beyond the mountains and I felt, as I feel - is it a paradox? - that a man can never find or need better companionship than that of himself.

Book Excerpt: "What about your family, Abu Huwa? Are you an orphan?” the little girl very innocently asked the Sphinx. “My father and your father are one and the same. However, I do have a brother who has stood as my mirror throughout time on the opposite horizon. It is I who faces east, but it is he who faces west. I am the recorder of yesterday and he holds the records of tomorrow. I am the positive, and he is my negative. I carry the right eye of the sun and he carries the left eye of the moon. He keeps his eye on the underworld and I keep an eye on the world over. Together we have joined the sky and earth, and split fire and water.” Seham stood on all toes to peek over the Sphinx's shoulder for a sign of his brother. “Where is he?” she asked, her eyes still searching the open horizon. “He has yet to be uncovered, but as I stand above the sands of time, he still sleeps below. Before the descent of Adam, we have both stood as loyal Protectors of the Two Halls of Truth.” The girl asked in astonishment, “I've never heard of these halls, Abu Huwa. Where are they?” “At the end of each of our tails is a passage that will reveal to you the secrets of Time. One hall reflects a thousand truths, and the other hall reflects all that is untrue. One will speak to your heart, and the other will speak to your mind. This is why you need to use both your heart and mind to understand which one is real, and which is a distorted illusion created to misguide those that have neglected their conscience. Both passageways connect you to the Great Hall of Records.” “What is the Hall of Records?” “The Great Pyramid, my child. It is as multidimensional in its shape as it is in its purpose. Every layer and every brick marks the coming of a prophet, the ascension of evil, or another cycle of man. It contains the entire history and future of mankind. And, as is above, so is below. Above ground, it serves as the most powerful energy source to harmonize and power the world! The shape of the pyramid above ground is also the same image mirrored beneath it. Underground, it serves as a powerful well and drain. This is really why Egypt is called the Land of Two Lands. There exists a huge world of its own underneath the plateau, a world within worlds. Large amounts of gold, copper and mercury were once housed here, including the secrets of Time, the 100th name of He Who Is All, and a gift from Truth that still awaits to be discovered. It sleeps with Time in the Great Pyramid, hidden away in a lower shaft that leads to the stars.” Dialogue from 'The Little Girl and the Sphinx' by Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (Dar-El Shams, 2010)

I know you,” he added, helping to arrange the blanket over my shoulders. “You won’t drop the subject until I agree to check on your cousin, so I’ll do it. But only under one condition.” “John,” I said, whirling around to clutch his arm again. “Don’t get too excited,” he warned. “You haven’t heard the condition.” “Oh,” I said, eagerly. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it. Thank you. Alex has never had a very good life-his mother ran away when he was a baby, and his dad spent most of his life in jail…But, John, what is all this?” I swept my free hand out to indicate the people remaining on the dock, waiting for the boat John had said was arriving soon. I’d noticed some of them had blankets like the one he’d wrapped around me. “A new customer service initiative?” John looked surprised at my change of topic…then uncomfortable. He stooped to reach for the driftwood Typhon had dashed up to drop at his feet. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, stiffly. “You’re giving blankets away to keep them warm while they wait. When did this start happening?” “You mentioned some things when you were here the last time….” He avoided meeting my gaze by tossing the stick for his dog. “They stayed with me.” My eyes widened. “Things I said?” “About how I should treat the people who end up here.” He paused at the approach of a wave-though it was yards off-and made quite a production of moving me, and my delicate slippers, out of its path. “So I decided to make a few changes.” It felt as if one of the kind of flowers I liked-a wild daisy, perhaps-had suddenly blossomed inside my heart. “Oh, John,” I said, and rose onto my toes to kiss his cheek. He looked more than a little surprised by the kiss. I thought I might actually have seen some color come into his cheeks. “What was that for?” he asked. “Henry said nothing was the same after I left. I assumed he meant everything was much worse. I couldn’t imagine it was the opposite, that things were better.” John’s discomfort at having been caught doing something kind-instead of reckless or violet-was sweet. “Henry talks too much,” he muttered. “But I’m glad you like it. Not that it hasn’t been a lot of added work. I’ll admit it’s cut down on the complaints, though, and even the fighting amongst our rowdier passengers. So you were right. Your suggestions helped.” I beamed up at him. Keeper of the dead. That’s how Mr. Smith, the cemetery sexton, had referred to John once, and that’s what he was. Although the title “protector of the dead” seemed more applicable. It was totally silly how much hope I was filled with by the fact that he’d remembered something I’d said so long ago-like maybe this whole consort thing might work out after all. I gasped a moment later when there was a sudden rush of white feathers, and the bird he’d given me emerged from the grizzly gray fog seeming to engulf the whole beach, plopping down onto the sand beside us with a disgruntled little humph. “Oh, Hope,” I said, dashing tears of laughter from my eyes. Apparently I had only to feel the emotion, and she showed up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you behind. It was his fault, you know.” I pointed at John. The bird ignored us both, poking around in the flotsam washed ashore by the waves, looking, as always, for something to eat. “Her name is Hope?” John asked, the corners of his mouth beginning to tug upwards. “No.” I bristled, thinking he was making fun of me. Then I realized I’d been caught. “Well, all right…so what if it is? I’m not going to name her after some depressing aspect of the Underworld like you do all your pets. I looked up the name Alastor. That was the name of one of the death horses that drew Hades’s chariot. And Typhon?” I glanced at the dog, cavorting in and out of the waves, seemingly oblivious of the cold. “I can only imagine, but I’m sure it means something equally unpleasant.

It happen’d one Day about Noon going towards my Boat, I was exceedingly surpriz’d with the Print of a Man’s naked Foot on the Shore, which was very plain to be seen in the Sand: I stood like one Thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an Apparition; I listen’d, I look’d round me, I could hear nothing, nor see any Thing, I went up to a rising Ground to look farther, I went up the Shore and down the Shore, but it was all one, I could see no other Impression but that one, I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my Fancy; but there was no Room for that, for there was exactly the very Print of a Foot, Toes, Heel, and every Part of a Foot; how it came thither, I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. But

Going barefoot is the gentlest way of walking and can symbolise a way of living - being authentic, vulnerable, sensitive to our surroundings. It’s the feeling of enjoying warm sand beneath our toes, or carefully making our way over sharp rocks in the darkness. It’s a way of living that has the lightest impact, removing the barrier between us and nature. — Adele Coombs, “Barefoot Dreaming

Turning back, she nodded at the man, offering another smile as she passed. She suspected they’d passed him about a dozen times in the grocery store during their back and forth. He looked vaguely familiar, and his smile was almost flirty, which was something Anders had apparently noticed, if she were to judge by the scowl presently on his face. Goodness, Anders looked almost jealous, Valerie thought, her smile unintentionally widening as she passed the man, which made his smile widen appreciatively. The whole thing made her feel pretty darned good and she walked straight back to Anders, grinned, and went up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Smile. Life is good,” she said lightly before moving to the passenger door. “Cheeky,” Anders muttered, opening it for her before she could. Grinning, Valerie stepped up into her seat. She reached for her seat belt, and then gave a start when Anders leaned in, his face suddenly in front of hers. “That wasn’t a kiss,” he informed her when she stared at him wide-eyed. “This is.

It is, for one thing, a clear sunny day, which is no small piece of luck when you’re on a Northern California beach in October. The sand is actually warm between their toes, instead of dank and gritty; but the air also has the crisp autumnal bite that makes you want to wrap yourself in something soft. No one acts crabby, or restless, or bored. Billie has packed some particularly delicious sandwiches—pesto chicken for the adults, hummus for Olive (who has recently gone vegetarian)—and they wash these down with tepid cocoa from a thermos

She told me to keep writing. After my journal filled up, I bought another one. As I wrote and read my entries to Joan, I felt myself metamorphosing. My growth was like the tide, coming in waves, retracting out of reach, coming back. Sometimes undercurrents came, pulling at my feet, sucking the sand out from under them. I dug my toes in hard and closed my eyes and managed to stay mostly upright, but those riptides came anyway, guided by the same moon that looked so benevolent, so white and happy against the indigo sky, so serene and fat and innocent, so far away. (141)

The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It's incomprehensible because there's nothing to compare it to. It's like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who's lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.

The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well-prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washes through them, knocking them off their feet. It’s incomprehensible because there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who’s lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.

Here am I, a little animal called a man--a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,--all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move--for ever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness. Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life--it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces--colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death--and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.

Emma, calm down. I had to know-" I point my finger in his face, almost touching his eyeball. "It's one thing for me to give your permission to look into it. But I'm pretty sure looking into it without my consent is illegal. In fact, I'm pretty sure everything that woman does is illegal. Do you even know what the Mafia is, Galen?" His eyebrows lift in surprise. "She told you who she is? I mean, who she used to be?" I nod. "While you were checking in with Grom. Once in the Mob, always in the Mob, if you ask me. How else would she get all her money? But I guess you wouldn't care about that, since she buys you houses and cars and fake IDs." I snatch my wrist away and turn back toward our hotel. At least, I hope it's our hotel. Galen laughs. "Emma, it's not Rachel's money; it's mine." I whirl on him. "You are a fish. You don't have a job. And I don't think Syrena currency has any of our presidents on it." Now "our" means I'm human again. I wish I could make up my mind. He crosses his arms. "I earn it another way. Walk to the Gulfarium with me, and I'll tell you how." The temptation divides me like a cleaver. I'm one part hissy fit and one part swoon. I have a right to be mad, to press charges, to cut Rachel's hair while she's sleeping. But do I really want to risk the chance that she keeps a gun under her pillow? Do I want to miss the opportunity to scrunch my toes in the sand and listen to Galen's rich voice tell me how a fish came to be wealthy? Nope, I don't. Taking care to ram my shoulder into him, I march past him and hopefully in the right direction. When he catches up to me, his grin threatens the rest of my hissy fit side, so I turn away, fixing my glare on the waves. "I sell stuff to humans," he says. I glance at him. He's looking at me, his expression every bit as expectant as I feel. I hate this little game of ours. Maybe because I'm no good at it. He won't tell me more unless I ask. Curiosity is one of my most incurable flaws-and Galen knows it. Still, I already gave up a perfectly good tantrum for him, so I feel like he owes me. Never mind that he saved my life today. That was so two hours ago. I lift my chin. "Rachel says I'm a millionaire," he says, his little knowing smirk scrubbing my nerves like a Brillo pad. "But for me, it's not about the money. Like you, I have a soft spot for history." Crap, crap, crap. How can he already know me this well? I must be as readable as the alphabet. What's the use? He's going to win, every time.

For three weeks straight I had been observing the ocean. On the twenty-first day, I saw a man running along the shoreline. I could hear his feet hitting the sand. It was the first time I was able to discern with utter precision every nuance, every gearshift, every soft click of another person's mind. He remembered that he was there to run, and he even remembered a time there was a reason for it. He did not remember the reason, nor did he want to. He feared he might be running for the old reasons, and didn't want to imitate himself. That would be running in place. Not too far down below the top shelves of memory he knew he was there to run for a reason, but still he decided to invent a different reason. He was reinvigorated by this decision to find a new reason, and ran even faster. He’d run seventeen miles when he realized in dismay that he'd forgotten to do it. He’d been running off the memory of an idea. He was exhausted and his lungs burned. He pushed his head into the sand and his legs ran in a circle around his head that he was screwing into the sand. He pushed down and screw-drove himself until only his toes stuck out. His toes were twined around each other. I could no longer hear his thoughts. Was he dead? His heart was still beating.

As he bent down and scratched her behind the ears like she was a harmless dog, I felt a sadness more acute than anything I'd ever felt before. Weylyn Grey didn't belong in my world. He belonged in theirs, and there was nothing I could say to convince him otherwise. My suspicions were only confirmed when he finally looked up and saw me. There was freedom in his face, relief mixed with sadness. In that moment, I could feel sand between my toes, water on my skin. I saw the sun melt into water until everything was starry and purple. I held Weylyn one last time in that dark place, then turned and walked into the bright white snow.

She moved closer to me. I put my arm around her, marveling at the smoothness of her skin. "Thrasius..." "Passia?" She paused, and I realized that she was gathering her courage to speak. "That night, in your cubiculum, I..." I took her hands and held them together between my own. "It's all right, Passia. You don't have to say anything." "You surprised me," she blurted out. "I surprised myself. It took everything I had not to keep you there with me." She leaned forward until our faces were close. "I know." There was nothing to do but kiss her, with all the passion I had harbored from the moment when she first appeared in the kitchen on the day of my arrival. Her lips were soft, and sweet like fresh Iberian honey. I ran my hands along her back and up into the tangle of her hair. My thumbs stroked the flesh of her neck and cheeks, and when they pulled away, her lips. We fell into the sand, twining together our summer-tanned limbs. Our hands roamed up and down the length of each other, slowly removing each article of clothing. I delighted in feeling the way the measure of my passion made my skin tingle with desire from head to toe. "Apicius always says you are the answer to his prayers. I think he is wrong. I think you are the answer to mine," she whispered in my ear before I entered her and we both cried aloud. The sound was washed away by the crash of waves beyond us.

I know what the problem is.” Curran pulled his shoulders back and flexed, warming up a little. I stole a glance. He had decided to fight in jeans and an old black T-shirt, from which he’d torn the sleeves. Probably his workout shirt. His biceps were carved, the muscle defined and built by countless exertions, neither too bulky nor too lean. Perfect. Kissing him might make me guilty of catastrophically bad judgment, but at least nobody could fault my taste. The trick was not to kiss him again. Once could be an accident; twice was trouble. “You said something?” I arched an eyebrow at him. Nonchalance—best camouflage for drooling. Both the werebison and the swordsman looked ready to charge: the muscles of their legs tense, leaning forward slightly on their toes. They seemed to be terribly sure that we would stay in one place and wait for them. Curran was looking at their legs, too. They must be expecting a distraction from the lamia. She sat cocooned in magic, holding on with both hands as it strained on its leash. “I said, I know why you’re afraid to fight with me.” “And why is that?” If he flexed again, I’d have to implement emergency measures. Maybe I could kick some sand at him or something. Hard to look hot brushing sand out of your eyes. “You want me.” Oh boy. “You can’t resist my subtle charm, so you’re afraid you’re going to make a spectacle out of yourself.” “You know what? Don’t talk to me.

But I'm pretty sure Mom won't consent to a field trip across the country with my hot boyfriend. Especially not back to Florida." I clamp my mouth shut so fast my teeth should be chipped. He grins. "You think I'm hot?" "My mom thinks you are." Except, Mom's not the one blushing right now. "Hmm," he says, giving me a you're-busted look. "As hot as I am, I don't think she'd buy into my charm on this one. We'll have to call in a professional." Then that fish prince actually winks at me. "You mean Rachel," I say, toeing the sand. "I guess it's worth a shot. Don't expect much, though. I've already missed too much school." "We could fly down on the weekend. Be back before school on Monday." I nod. "She might go for that. If Rachel plays her cards right." Yeah, she might go for that. She might also pierce her tongue, dye her hair cherry red and spike it peacock-style. Ain't happening. I shrug. "I'll just keep practicing while you're gone. Maybe we don't have to go-" "No!" Galen and Toraf shout, startling me. "Why not? I won't go too deep-" "Out of the question," Galen says, standing. "You will not get in the water while I'm gone." I stomp a hole in the sand. "I already told you that you're not ordering me around, didn't I? Now you've pretty much guaranteed that I'm getting in the water, Your Highness." Galen runs a hand through his hair and utters a string of cuss words, courtesy of Rachel, no doubt. he paces in the sane a few seconds, pinching the bridge of his nose. Suddenly he stops. Relaxes. Smiles even. He walks over to his friend, slaps him on the back. "Toraf, I need a favor.

I am, I love – the stars at night, the beach sand between our toes, the gentle kiss of cool wind that brushes against your skin. The moon that beams light across the water. I am, I love – the welcome smile that greets you in the shyest way; eyes playful and filled with light. Oh the night. The colours which few truly notice. The beach, the beach – at night, I am, I love. The water that laps at the shores, kindred spirits dancing to the rhythmic waves and drumming carried from across the water. In my eyes a billions flecks of light, in your eyes the same constellations hold true. Alone to explore each other, together. Hushed, racing, slow, shy, bold, urgent, relaxed, and too long apart. And now, finally- the night sky, the beach, and you and I." Excerpt from the upcoming book "The spark (of a muse)". By Cheri Bauer

Above the roar of pounding waves, Kya called to the birds. The ocean sang bass, the gulls sang soprano. Shrieking and crying, they circled over the marsh and above the sand as she threw piecrust and yeast rolls onto the beach. Legs hanging down, heads twisting, they landed. A few birds pecked gently between her toes, and she laughed from the tickling until tears streamed down her cheeks, and finally great, ragged sobs erupted from that tight place below her throat. When the carton was empty she didn’t think she could stand the pain, so afraid they would leave her like everybody else. But the gulls squatted on the beach around her and went about their business of preening their gray extended wings. So she sat down too and wished she could gather them up and take them with her to the porch to sleep. She imagined them all packed in her bed, a fluffy bunch of warm, feathered bodies under the covers together.

Above the roar of pounding waves, Kya called to the birds. The ocean sang bass, the gulls sang soprano. Shrieking and crying, they circled over the marsh and above the sand as she threw piecrust and yeast rolls onto the beach. Legs hanging down, heads twisting, they landed. A few birds pecked gently between her toes, and she laughed from the tickling until tears streamed down her cheeks, and finally great, ragged sobs erupted from that tight place below her throat. When the carton was empty she didn't think she could stand the pain, so afraid they would leave her like everybody else. But the gulls squatted on the beach around her and went about their business of preening their gray extended wings. So she sat down too and wished she could gather them up and take them with her to the porch to sleep. She imagined them all packed in her bed, a fluffy bunch of warm, feathered bodies under the covers together.

What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can't see the desert if you can't smell it. Dusty? Of course it's dusty—this is Utah! But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that peice of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk—yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills—yes sir, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse? Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk—walk—WALK upon your sweet and blessed land!

he same goes for new situations. Imagine a child who’s more afraid of the ocean than are other kids the same age. Thoughtful parents recognize that this fear is natural and even wise; the ocean is indeed dangerous. But they don’t allow her to spend the summer on the safety of the dunes, and neither do they drop her in the water and expect her to swim. Instead they signal that they understand her unease, while urging her to take small steps. Maybe they play in the sand for a few days with the ocean waves crashing at a safe distance. Then one day they approach the water’s edge, perhaps with the child riding on a parent’s shoulders. They wait for calm weather, or low tide, to immerse a toe, then a foot, then a knee. They don’t rush; every small step is a giant stride in a child’s world. When ultimately she learns to swim like a fish, she has reached a crucial turning point in her relationship not only with water but also with fear

The same goes for new situations. Imagine a child who’s more afraid of the ocean than are other kids the same age. Thoughtful parents recognize that this fear is natural and even wise; the ocean is indeed dangerous. But they don’t allow her to spend the summer on the safety of the dunes, and neither do they drop her in the water and expect her to swim. Instead they signal that they understand her unease, while urging her to take small steps. Maybe they play in the sand for a few days with the ocean waves crashing at a safe distance. Then one day they approach the water’s edge, perhaps with the child riding on a parent’s shoulders. They wait for calm weather, or low tide, to immerse a toe, then a foot, then a knee. They don’t rush; every small step is a giant stride in a child’s world. When ultimately she learns to swim like a fish, she has reached a crucial turning point in her relationship not only with water but also with fear.

That evening after tea the four children all managed to get down to the beach again and get their shoes and stockings off and feel the sand between their toes. But the next day was more solemn. For then, in the Great Hall of Cair Paravel--that wonderful hall with the ivory roof and the west door all hung with peacock’s feathers and the eastern door which opens right onto the sea, in the presence of all their friends and to the sound of trumpets, Aslan solemnly crowned them and led them onto the four thrones amid deafening shouts of, “Long Live King Peter! Long Live Queen Susan! Long Live King Edmund! Long Live Queen Lucy!” “Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen. Bear it well, Sons of Adam! Bear it well, Daughters of Eve!” said Aslan. And through the eastern door, which was wide open, came the voices of the mermen and the mermaids swimming close to the castle steps and singing in honor of their new Kings and Queens.

What’s insane about this—other than the fact we’ve never talked about it, not even once—is that I’m not nervous in any way. Just excited. We already feel like a married couple, and I say that in the best, non-boring way possible. He is stability and love. Security and confidence. I’m his tide, and he’s my anchor. Or maybe the sand itself. “Edie Van Der Zee, I want to dip my toes in the waves you make every single day for the rest of my miserable life. I want to fuck you—just you, only you, no one else—and a lot. Every. Single. Day. I want to live with you. I want to parade that fucked-up thing we have that keeps people raising eyebrows and thinking I’m a cradle-snatching douchebag, because fuck ’em, they’ll never have what we have. Will you marry me? I don’t ask for a lot. Not for kids, not for dinner, not for anything to be done in the house. I don’t ask you for anything other than what you’re willing to give me.” Luna peeks from the door, smiling. I turn my body to her, smiling. I expect her to sign me something. Something like “aw, gross,” or “Daddy is being silly again”. But she doesn’t. Instead, she arches one eyebrow, opens her lips, and lets the words fall out, awarding her father with the best present he could ever have. “Say yes.

The Duration Here they are are on the beach where the boy played for fifteen summers, before he grew too old for French cricket, shrimping and rock pools. Here is the place where he built his dam year after year. See, the stream still comes down just as it did, and spreads itself on the sand into a dozen channels. How he enlisted them: those splendid spades, those sunbonneted girls furiously shoring up the ramparts. Here they are on the beach, just as they were those fifteen summers. She has a rough towel ready for him. The boy was always last out of the water. She would rub him down hard, chafe him like a foal up on its legs for an hour and trembling, all angles. She would dry carefully between his toes. Here they are on the beach, the two of them sitting on the same square of mackintosh, the same tartan rug. Quality lasts. There are children in the water, and mothers patrolling the sea's edge, calling them back from the danger zone beyond the breakers. How her heart would stab when he went too far out. Once she flustered into the water, shouting until he swam back. He was ashamed of her then. Wouldn't speak, wouldn't look at her even. Her skirt was sopped. She had to wring out the hem. She wonders if Father remembers. Later, when they've had their sandwiches she might speak of it. There are hours yet. Thousands, by her reckoning.

Twirling on the sand, she quotes Emma Goldman to him in a song. “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” He steps up. Come on, Gia, he says, be in my revolution. She is barefoot on the sand. Where are her stockings? She hasn’t taken them off; they’re not lying in a heap nearby. When his open palm goes around her waist, he can’t feel her corset, he feels velvet and under it the curve of her natural waist and lower back. Suddenly he has three left feet and, usually such a capable dancer, can’t move backward or forward. She steps on his awkward toes a few times, laughs, and they trip and fall to their knees on the sand. What’s gotten into you, Harry, she says. I can’t imagine, he says, his eyes roaming wildly over her flushed and eager face. Both his hands are entwining the narrow space from which her hips begin. It’s late afternoon on the wide Hampton beach; it’s gray and foggy when he kisses her. He’s never kissed Sicilian lips before, only Bostonian. There is a boiling ocean of contrast between the two. Boston girls were born and raised on soil that was frozen from October to April and breathed through perfectly colored mouths that took in chill winds and fog from the stormy harbor. But his Sicilian queen has roamed the Mediterranean meadows and her abundant lips breathed in fearsome fire from Typhonic volcanoes. He kisses her as if they are alone at night—as if she is already his. His arms wrap around her back and press her to him. They become suspended, he floats like a phantom around her in the moist air. He won’t let her go, he can’t.

LATE ONE AFTERNOON, after watching for Chase Andrews, Kya walks from her shack and lies back on a sliver of beach, slick from the last wave. She stretches her arms over her head, brushing them against the wet sand, and extends her legs, toes pointed. Eyes closed, she rolls slowly toward the sea. Her hips and arms leave slight indentions in the glistening sand, brightening and then dimming as she moves. Rolling nearer the waves, she senses the ocean’s roar through the length of her body and feels the question: When will the sea touch me? Where will it touch me first? The foamy surge rushes the shore, reaching toward her. Tingling with expectancy, she breathes deep. Turns more and more slowly. With each revolution, just before her face sweeps the sand, she lifts her head gently and takes in the sun-salt smell. I am close, very close. It is coming. When will I feel it? A fever builds. The sand wetter beneath her, the rumble of surf louder. Even slower, by inches she moves, waiting for the touch. Soon, soon. Almost feeling it before it comes. She wants to open her eyes to peek, to see how much longer. But she resists, squinting her lids even tighter, the sky bright behind them, giving no hints. Suddenly she shrieks as the power rushes beneath her, fondles her thighs, between her legs, flows along her back, swirling under her head, pulling her hair in inky strands. She rolls faster into the deepening wave, against streaming shells and ocean bits, the water embracing her. Pushing against the sea’s strong body, she is grasped, held. Not alone. Kya sits up and opens her eyes to the ocean foaming around her in soft white patterns, always changing.

Dear Matt, In less than a day, I’ ll be standing on the same sand you stood on so many times before. Well, not the same sand, with the tides and winds and erosion and all of that, but the same symbolic sand. I’m so excited and scared that I can’ t sleep – even though I have to wake up in five hours! You know, I saved every one of your postcards. They’re here in a box under my bed – all the little stories you sent, like little pieces of California. Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you. But you don’ t say anything. Remember how you’ d come back from your vacation on the beach and tell me what it really felt like? What the ocean sounded like at dawn when the beach was deserted? What your hair and skin tasted like after swimming in saltwater all day? How the sand could burn your feet as you walked on it, but if you stuck your toes in, it was cold and wet underneath? How you spent three hours sitting on Ocean Beach just to watch the sun sink into the water a million miles away? If I closed my eyes as you were talking, it was like I was there, like your stories were my stories. In many ways, I feel as if I have memories of you there, too. Do you think that’s crazy? Matt, please don’ t think badly about Frankie’s contest. It’s just a silly game. It’s so Frankie, you know? No, I guess you wouldn’ t. You’ d kill her if you did! She just misses you. We all do. I’ ll look out for her, though. I promise. Please watch over us tomorrow, and for the next few weeks while we’re away. You’ ll be in my thoughts the whole time, like always. I’m going to find some red sea glass for you. I miss you more than you could ever know. Love, Anna

Sam Underwater, everything is quiet. Tranquil. Like heaven is all around you, caressing your body, pulling you into its embrace. Deeper and deeper, it pulls at your legs until they beg to be released. I hold my water-resistant camera in front of me and take multiple pictures of the cold depths of the ocean. Its beauty never fails to mesmerize me. But I can’t stay for too long; sooner or later, that urge to breathe always pulls me back to the surface toward the dark sky littered with a million flickering lights … back into the noise of swooshing water and rushing wind. The shore is mostly deserted, except for a few beer cans, party cups, and some clothes and trash lying scattered all around. The only other person there is Nate Wilson … the most handsome guy at school and so much more than that. He’s sitting on a few rocks near the edge of the beach with a girl by his side. I can’t stop watching. Their hands touch briefly, but then the wave overtakes me and blocks my view. When the water lowers, I shake my head, but the waves keep picking up. Still, I hold up my camera and take a few pictures. Right as he turns his head toward me, I dive underwater again. Here, there are no boys, no girls, and no secret touches. Just me and the water, and all the beautiful creatures below that need to meet my camera. A single picture says more than words ever will. No matter how powerful they are. Nate People say it only takes a few minutes for your life to be destroyed. I never believed them … until today. With just the snap of a finger, a stupid decision and a simple push, I marked my own fate. My body grows colder and colder the longer I stay in the water. It consumes me whole as I stray farther and farther away from myself. From reality. I’m so damn dizzy, but I can’t collapse here. Not now, not in the middle of the ocean. I take a deep breath and peel my eyes open, forcing myself to go. That’s when I spot her … the girl and her camera. FLASH. I cover my eyes with my hand. Salty seawater enters my nostrils and mouth as I struggle to swim. When I open my eyes again, the girl is gone; swallowed by the same waves that drag me back to the shore. As my feet sink into the sand and the water creeps up against my toes, I stop and turn around, clutching the long red hairs in my hand as though they’re my last lifeline. This is now the place where not only my life changed forever. But hers too.

she had dark chestnut hair, a heart-shaped face, large wide eyes, full lips…and appeared about as miserable as he’d ever seen a young woman, a state he suspected had something to do with the older woman at her side. His gaze slid over the matron. Well-rounded with dark hair, she was pretty despite the bloom of youth being gone—or she would be if she weren’t wearing a pursed, dissatisfied expression as she surveyed the activity in the ballroom. Adrian glanced back to the girl. “First season?” he queried, his curiosity piqued. “Yes.” Reg looked amused. “Why is no one dancing with her?” A beauty such as this should have had a full card. “No one dares ask her—and you will not either, if you value your feet.” Adrian’s eyebrows rose, his gaze turning reluctantly from the young woman to the man at his side. “She is blind as a bat and dangerous to boot,” Reg announced, nodding when Adrian looked disbelieving. “Truly, she cannot dance a step without stomping on your toes and falling about. She cannot even walk without bumping into things.” He paused, cocking one eyebrow in response to Adrian’s expression. “I know you do not believe it. I did not either…much to my own folly.” Reginald turned to glare at the girl and continued: “I was warned, but ignored it and took her in to dinner….” He glanced back at Adrian. “I was wearing dark brown trousers that night, unfortunately. She mistook my lap for a table, and set her tea on me. Or rather, she tried to. It overset and…” Reg paused, shifting uncomfortably at the memory. “Damn me if she did not burn my piffle.” Adrian stared at his cousin and then burst into laughter. Reginald looked startled, then smiled wryly. “Yes, laugh. But if I never sire another child—legitimate or not—I shall blame it solely on Lady Clarissa Crambray.” Shaking his head, Adrian laughed even harder, and it felt so good. It had been many years since he’d found anything the least bit funny. But the image of the delicate little flower along the wall mistaking Reg’s lap for a table and oversetting a cup of tea on him was priceless. “What did you do?” he got out at last. Reg shook his head and raised his hands helplessly. “What could I do? I pretended it had not happened, stayed where I was, and tried not to cry with the pain. ‘A gentleman never deigns to notice, or draw attention in any way to, a lady’s public faux pas,’” he quoted dryly, then glanced back at the girl with a sigh. “Truth to tell, I do not think she even realized what she’d done. Rumor has it she can see fine with spectacles, but she is too vain to wear them.” Still smiling, Adrian followed Reg’s gaze to the girl. Carefully taking in her wretched expression, he shook his head. “No. Not vain,” he announced, watching as the older woman beside Lady Clarissa murmured something, stood, and moved away. “Well,” Reg began, but paused when, ignoring him, Adrian moved toward the girl. Shaking his head, he muttered, “I warned you.” -Adrian & Reg

First crush, first kiss, first time I saw the ocean And dug my toes in the sand Baseball and summer nights, casting out when the fish first bite, First time I got a Chevy in my hands I thought nothing can touch that by a mile I thought nothing can make that moment seem so worthwhile

And there too was the cause of his happiness. Never far away, when I glanced over, he was standing in the full sun, and he looked bored, picking up small stones from the track and skimming them at a small bird, then absently rubbing a groove in the sand with the toe of his foot. The new boy, same as the old boys – healthy, young, beautiful and almost certainly stupid. Or clever enough to keep his mouth shut and know that opinions are not required of the emperor’s intimate companion. Those who talked least lasted longest. This one, with his thick, light brown hair, the tall fit body, the averted eyes, looked promising. I suppose he was the age Hadrian’s son might have been. Harmless enough. He had walked to the horses where they stood in their shelter and he was suddenly animated, rubbing their muzzles, letting the beasts lower their heads and push against him, taking a handful of grain which he scooped from the bucket, straight from his hand. Sabina said he had been a groom. He was smiling now, the ordinary beauty of youth transformed into something more special, so perhaps it was true. It was a good thing he liked horses; he would need some friends. At that moment I saw the emperor’s head turn across the earnest group of advisers and his eyes watch the boy as he stroked the animals. Perhaps this boy would do; would keep the emperor happy and occupied while they coped with Egypt.

She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That’s life. It hurts, it’s dirty, and it feels very, very good. ==========

The waves of the Pacific slap the sand between my toes and off in the distance the setting sun coaxes a million diamond-fish to pierce the ocean’s surface, stand on their tails, and shimmy.

He’s still there. Kay diligently avoided eye contact—not that she could even make out the stranger’s eyes by moonlight from thirty yards away. She’d assumed she’d have the beach to herself on this brisk Tuesday night in late May. Didn’t everyone else have a life? The wet sand at the water’s edge was smooth and frigid under her bare toes—her sandals dangled from her fingers. The crisp, salt-scented breeze billowed her calf-length skirt and open cotton blazer, and whipped strands of pale blonde hair across her face. She planted her feet as the next icy wave surged ashore, leaving her toes buried in sand. After two more waves, only the insteps showed. A flash of silver drew her eye down the beach. Not silver, she saw now, but a white dress shirt being balled up and tossed to the sand. The shirt belonging to the stranger she mustn’t make eye contact with because you never know. He wasn’t looking her way, so she watched him. She watched him pull off his black shoes and socks. She watched him unzip his dark slacks and step out of them. She watched him drop his briefs and kick them away. Her head snapped forward. That’s why you never make eye contact! Because you never know! Because the most normal-looking man can turn out to be some nut job who thinks nothing of stripping in front of a strange woman and—and— She sneaked a peek. And running into the ocean full-tilt.

Jelly Bean Toes Preparation and Instructions: This is a wonderful game to play while taking off children’s shoes and socks. Sit with the child comfortably in front of you or in a chair. The Game: Grasp one of the child’s feet and begin to feel around inside the shoe. As you come to the toes, say, “I think there are jelly beans in here. I love jelly beans. Yum, Yum!” Proceed to take off the child’s shoes while you continue to talk about jelly beans and how you can’t wait to see them, taste them, and so on. After you get the shoes off, continue the same process with the socks. You may say, “Now I know they are jelly beans. But wait, they are moving. Maybe they are jumping beans instead of jelly beans.” Be sure your facial expressions are exaggerated. Pull off the socks and say with surprise and delight, “Well, they are toes! Wonderful, beautiful, perfect toes!” Pretend to nibble the “jelly beans.” Many children have sand or dirt in their shoes. You may use this time to brush and clean the feet. Yes and No Game Preparation and Instructions: This is a wonderful game to play with a child who is a bit grumpy.

I don’t really fit in here,” she said to me one night. We were sitting on the sand, with our toes in the surf. At the edge of the party again. Ginger was wearing a peach tank top and holding a red plastic cup. “But I don’t fit in any better anywhere else.

She remembers the sand between her toes, the smell of the sea and the salt on her lips.

An hour later, a group of men from the funeral home arrived. With my grandfather's help, they cleaned my grandmother's body and marinated it in rice alcohol. When the wine had straightened her limbs, which had stiffened from rigor mortis, they dressed her in new clothes. Using a thick red thread, they tied her two big toes together to prevent her spirit from wandering. A cheap red lacquered coffin was brought into my grandparents' bedroom. A layer of sand was spread at the bottom to cushion the body. Rich families would use tea leaves instead of sand. The more expensive the tea, the richer and higher in status the dead were. We covered the sand with coarse, loosely woven cotton gauze. After my grandmother's body was laid inside the coffin, a small dish filled with burning oil was placed on the ground beneath it to keep her spirit warm. Incense in a large urn perfumed the air. It was time for friends and relatives to pay their respects.

And you expect me to believe that?” Shaking his head, Kevin left Iris and Kirihime to their bickering. He headed over to Lilian just as she was discarding her flip-flops. It was almost amusing to watch as she stuck her feet into the sand, clenching and unclenching her toes so as to feel the tiny grains between them. It was even more amusing when she took a stance, feet sliding until they were shoulder width apart, left hand on her hip and right clenched into a fist near her face. Kevin knew she’d gotten that pose from an anime or a manga—probably several. It was a common pose, after all. “All right! It’s time to get wet!” He facepalmed. “That’s really not something you should be saying in public.” He looked over at Justin, Alex, and Andrew, all of whom were lying on the ground, twitching. Blood squirted from their noses like oil from a broken gas line. “Really not something you should say in public.

Semi-Charmed Life" Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo... I'm packed and I'm holding I'm smiling, she's living, she's golden She lives for me, says she lives for me Ovation, her own motivation She comes round and she goes down on me And I make her smile, like a drug for you Do ever what you wanna do, coming over you Keep on smiling, what we go through One stop to the rhythm that divides you And I speak to you like the chorus to the verse Chop another line like a coda with a curse Come on like a freak show takes the stage We give them the games we play, she said... I want something else to get me through this Semi-charmed kinda life, baby, baby I want something else, I'm not listening when you say good-bye Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo... The sky was gold, it was rose I was taking sips of it through my nose And I wish I could get back there, someplace back there Smiling in the pictures you would take Doing crystal meth, will lift you up until you break It won't stop, I won't come down I keep stock with a tick-tock rhythm, a bump for the drop And then I bumped up, I took the hit that I was given Then I bumped again, then I bumped again I said... How do I get back there to the place where I fell asleep inside you How do I get myself back to the place where you said... I want something else to get me through this Semi-charmed kinda life, baby, baby I want something else, I'm not listening when you say good-bye I believe in the sand beneath my toes The beach gives a feeling, an earthy feeling I believe in the faith that grows And the four right chords can make me cry When I'm with you I feel like I could die And that would be alright, alright And when the plane came in, she said she was crashing The velvet it rips in the city, we tripped on the urge to feel alive Now I'm struggling to survive, Those days you were wearing that velvet dress You're the priestess, I must confess Those little red panties they pass the test Slide up around the belly, face down on the mattress one And you hold me, and we're broken Still it's all that I wanna do, just a little now Feel myself, heading off the ground I'm scared, I'm not coming down No, no And I won't run for my life She's got her jaws now locked down in a smile But nothing is alright, alright And I want something else to get me through this life Baby, I want something else Not listening when you say Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo... The sky was gold, it was rose (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) I was taking sips of it through my nose (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) And I wish I could get back there (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) Someplace back there, in the place we used to start (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) I want something else (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) Third Eye Blind (1997)

When I reached the sunny sand beach, I slipped off my shoes and thrust my bare toes down into the warm, bone-dry sand. . . . Soon the palm-tops closed over my head, and I went on, right in towards the centre of the tiny island. Green coconuts hung under the palm-tufts, and some luxuriant bushes were thickly covered with snow-white blossoms, which smelt so sweet and seductive that I felt quite faint. . . . I was completely overwhelmed. I sank down on my knees and thrust my fingers deep down into the dry warm sand.

Know Your Ground Despite my blistered hands And calloused knuckles And over-taxed knees I cannot grow tomatoes It’s the soil, they said, Have your tested your levels? Calcium. Sand. Nitrogen. Clay. You must know your ground. But only lately have I walked this land Of my inheritance, Only recently looked At the wild mystery That lives beneath my toes, Only newly raked My fingers through earth And wondered, Is this bone that eroded To silt in my hand? Life that bled iron To fashion this bed? History that tastes So sweet on my tongue? In my frivolous hunger I surrendered my birthright. In your just disapproval I fled from my ground And now I fear this dormant soil Will never grow for me.

all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.

He opened his mouth to ask what she was about, but the question never made it past his lips. She was naked from the top of her head to the tips of her toes . . . and absolutely beautiful. His bride was a fine figure of a woman, all soft and round. Just the way he liked his women, and his mouth watered at the sight. But it was a very brief view he got before she tugged a long shirt on and let it drop to curtain all that loveliness. “What the bloody hell is that?” As the first real words he’d said since marrying the woman, Ross supposed they left much to be desired. But he was just so shocked at the sight of the ugly shirt covering all that beauty, he couldn’t help himself.

She craned her neck to the side, stretching it. “When you reach my age, it’s sometimes hard to remember the shape of your life as it once was. Once, I carried that bedraggled rat on my shoulders, much like you do with your girl. I would take him to the beach before lunch-time and think that I would never tire of watching him squeal as the sand sinks around his toes, such precious toes. Now his squealing sounds like wheels in much need of oiling, and if they don’t grate my old bones, they make me snore. I don’t even want to think about what his toes might look like.” “Sorrow,” she said with a smile, “is not always tragic.

As they strode through the meadow, she had the eerie sensation of walking atop waves. Except this was a sea of petals, not saltwater. Her toe caught on a fallen branch, and she stumbled a bit. "Are you all right?" Colin asked. She nodded. "I was just distracted. Wondering how much loam is in this soil." "What?" He set down his side of the trunk. Minerva did the same. "You know," she said. "Loam. A mix of clay and sand. In order for he soil to support this many bluebells, it would-" "You're standing in the middle of this," -he spread his arms wide to indicate Nature's splendor- " and you're thinking about loam in the soil? You spend far too much time staring at the ground." Rounding the trunk, Colin plucked her off her feet. With gentle strength, he tumbled her into the bluebells. She lay flat on her back, breathless and dizzy from the sudden inversion. From the sudden nearness of him. He lay down next to her. "There. Have a rest. Look up at the sky for a change." Minerva stared up from the uneven ground. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears, and a crushed green scent engulfed her senses. The grasses and bluebells towered over her, swaying in the gentle breeze and dripping loveliness. Above everything, the sky hovered brilliantly and blue. Nearly cloudless, save for a few wispy, changing puffs of white that were apparently too proud to mimic rabbits or dragons or sailing ships.

couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d wake up at night with that taste on my tongue—wake up thinking about your foul, beautiful mouth.” He traced his thumb over her lips. “You don’t want to know the depraved things I’ve thought about this mouth.” “Hmmm, likewise, but you didn’t answer my question,” Aelin said, even as her toes curled in the wet sand and warm water. “Yes,” Rowan said thickly. “Some males enjoy doing it. To mark territory, for pleasure…” “Do females bite males?” He began to harden again inside her as the question lingered. Oh, gods—Fae lovers. Everyone should be so damn lucky to have one. Rowan rasped, “Do you want to bite me?” Aelin eyed his throat, his glorious body, and the face she had once so fiercely hated. And she wondered if it were possible to love someone

after i have drawn back the storm i am as still as the ocean, the cacophony of the world drowned out with my head submerged in the memory of your laughter. the low tide leaves our backbone exposed. i dig my toes into the sand. i am safe here.

You know,” she said, “it makes me think of a cartoon by Abner Dean that I saw a few years ago. It shows these people in a living room, sitting in a circle on the floor with their arms around each other, about eight or ten of them, and they are all sort of melted into each other in a kind of nasty way. They’ve built a bonfire in the middle on the rug, and the caption says, ‘After the others have left, how did we all get so wonderful?’” “Are we all so wonderful?” “Maybe I think of the cartoon because we’re all so unwonderful. Damn these sandals. Sand comes in the toes.

The second my bare feet touch stone, I become a thermometer-the mercury moves pas my toes, up through my legs and body to form a blush on my face- and what I see has already warmed me…this scooped out place in an ancient dune of sand, turned to rock, has the look of a hammock, a cradle, a papyrus raft…a space that invites me to lie down, roll over, stretch out and feel the texture of time beneath the elements. Collected in: Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature by Lorraine Anderson

Some people ask me what it’s like to be forgiven, to feel grace. It’s like walking on a long stretch of beach with nothing in sight but sky and waves and sand. With the sun piercing its brightness, the water tickling my toes, the roaring of the sea singing omniscience and power and yet, a deep peace, the waters changing from sandy brown to light green to a heavy blue, the waves cresting with the white peaks and then rushing to find my toes.

It’s like she stepped out of the car and walked until she reached something. The sea air with her toes enmeshed in wet sand. A cave that echoed so she could finally hear herself. The quiet solitude of the dwarfing Redwood forest with trunks the size of cars. The past smaller than a speck behind her.

Do you know the taste of betrayal? How would you know it? It's as if your clothes are full of sand, so full of sand that the grain bites you and pierce you and scratch you. You shake out your clothes, you wash them, you wash yourself, but even then, days later, years later, in the crevices of your toes, in the lining of the pockets, the grains pierce you. They're unbearable, those grains that don't go away whatever you do. You no longer know the real from the nightmare. Your heart, mind, mouth, everything is filled with sand.

Before I can ask Nancy where we should go next, she lifts her head and engages me with eyes blue as Rainbow Pool. She pulls off her left shoe and slips off her sock like she did in January over five years ago. Extending her leg beyond the ground-level boardwalk, she ever so lightly touches her big toe to a lonely clump of grass that somehow has managed to survive even though it is completely surrounded by the black sands only a few feet away from the blistering pool. Nancy puts an index finger to her lips cautioning me not to speak. No worries, my love, I reflect silently. You made it through, you survived, and you are well. Together we have made it back home.